Let’s try something interesting, together. Let’s imagine together, for a bit: there’s this beautiful building where believers gather to pray every day, and it has become a place where people encounter miracles, and get undiluted teachings from the Word of God. Let’s also say that this building is so well decorated, with exquisite furniture and lightings. It isn’t just a meeting place for believers to fellowship together, it’s also a fine work of art, neatly decorated and kept.
As a believer, if you have the privilege of visiting this building, how would you act in and around it?
I really wish I can hear your response, but I can’t. So, I’m just going to guess what I think your response will be. If you truly have reverence for God, then my guess is, you’ll carry yourself and conduct yourself properly around that space. You might not want to be loud. You’ll definitely not litter…I hope. Deep down, you might say, “God, please, before I leave here, let me also have an encounter with You”…right?
It’s almost second nature for Christians to revere the church building. Within the church building, a particular spot carries a higher reverence: the altar or say the pulpit. It’s beautiful, exactly how it should be. In the kingdom of God, order is a culture. Why the reverence and order? We do it because we believe it’s a place where we encounter God in the company of other believers. The moment we share, when we get into that space isn’t ordinary. It is sacred and super extraordinary.
I’ve noticed a problem though. I believe some believers revere a place of worship for the wrong reason. I think their motives come from the ideology the Israelites operated in, after they received the law. The ideology of fear and not wanting to get God angry. You know how it was in the Old Testament days; everything about the physical tabernacle was revered, so much so, anyone who does anything carelessly or even out of ignorance, received an instant judgement from God. Those judgements weren’t easy-going, they were very harsh. Death was included even. We don’t operate under the law no more, so this mind-set shouldn’t be the reason why you respect a place of worship.
Then again, a question has been in my heart recently, and I want to share that question with you, because, honestly, that is what I really want to talk about in this post. Here’s the question:
Why do we revere a place of worship, but hardly revere the very temple that God has chosen to dwell?
You know God hasn’t and still don’t live in a physical building, right? His presence can flood an entire building. Heaven can kiss earth, and we can have a tangible feel of that manifest presence of God. “However, the Most High doesn’t live in temples made by human hands…” Acts 7:48.
The temple of God is the body of the believer (SEE 1 Cor. 6:19). God created the body of the believer, and He deemed it fit for the fullest of His presence. The worry is, why don’t we honour the body that is truly where God resides as much as we honour the physical building that He doesn’t and had never lived in…why?
So, you can be overly careful about what you say while you’re in a church building, and then you leave there and feel free to say things that you wouldn’t have dared to say in a church building. There are things you can condemn yourself for doing within a church building, but you don’t mind if you do them outside a church building. There are songs you believe you can’t dance to in church, but they can blast through the speakers in your home, and your body (God’s very temple) can dance to them.
I learnt something that transformed my mind-set. It made, and is still making, my walk with God better. I’m not selfish, I’ll share it with you. Here it is: the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus didn’t change who God is. It reconciled us to God, because God dealt with sin, once and for all, through Jesus’ sacrifice. However, the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament.
What am I trying to get at? I need you to know that you can understand God’s character from observing the instructions He gave in the Old Testament. One of the many ways to learn what truly pleases God, as it relates to what we do with all the faculties in our body (His temple), is to observe the instructions He gave about the tabernacle in the Old Testament.
Observe how He instructed Moses to decorate the tabernacle. Observe how not everything could just apply. Observe who and what was permitted or not permitted to go in and out of the tabernacle. As you observe, remember that God couldn’t live in that man-made temple, because the plan was to make the body of the believer His temple. If God instructed that the tabernacle, that He couldn’t live in, should be that holy, it means He wants your body (His temple) to be holy too.
You can’t say all and do everything. Little wonder why Paul said, we have the right to do all things, but not everything profits us (1 Cor. 10:23). What do you say? What do you do? What do you listen? What do you watch? What do you read? Do you hold grudge, hatred, jealousy, lust, greed, fear or worry on your inside? Dear believer, You’re a House of Worship. Wherever you are, God is there with you, more than you honour the place of worship, honour the Sanctuary of God that you’re privileged to share with God—your body.
“…surrender yourself to God to be His scared, living sacrifices…this becomes your genuine expression of worship.” Romans 12:1
My prayer for you and me:
May we truly learn to honour God with all of who we are, beginning from what we allow to settle in our minds. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Get in the Gym, and
Stay Spiritually Fit.
